Comment by immibis
5 hours ago
I think bad regulation and over-regulation are different words for the same thing, but calling it over-regulation pushes a certain agenda that all regulations are bad, which people who profit from deregulation would like you to think.
> but calling it over-regulation pushes a certain agenda that all regulations are bad
Over-regulation implies that there is an optimal level of regulation that is non-zero. It just happens in practice that people don't complain when the level is pretty good and it is unusual for something to be under-regulated because the regulators are eager beavers for regulating things. The default state when there is a regulatory problem is usually over-regulation.
Like when the thread ancestor tried to find an example of a situation moving to under-regulated the first thing that leapt to mind was roaming charges which it must be admitted is a pretty minor problem. But the first thing that leaps to mind for over-regulation is things like the article where the cost of something expensive doubled and a potentially good idea struggles to be born into the world.
The Lower Thames Crossing project in the UK already generated 360000 pages of paper in the planing phase:
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/lower-thames-crossin...
The Works in Progress magazine says that, in comparison, environmental assessment for an extension of a line of the Madrid metro, had only 19 pages.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-madrid-built-its-metro-...
Granted, this is not completely the same, but 360 000 pages is a LOT. Most civilizational infrastructure around the world was built using orders of magnitude less bureaucracy.
That is overregulation for me, and I don't think this pushes any agenda except "360 000 pages for a tunnel is freaking insane".